Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
gentry, especially from the interior provinces. Working-class men of
color formed the bulk of the conscripts. Immigrants were exempt from
military duty. The war became so unpopular in the western provinces
that Salta attempted to secede from the republic.
Landowning, political, and merchant elites remained aloof from mili-
tary services, except in their provisioning. The support of such a large
army in the field created business opportunities that, in traditional fash-
ion, were restricted to the friends and supporters of President Mitre. His
political group, the Liberal Party, came to be known as “the party of the
purveyors.” They monopolized the fattest contracts to sell cattle and
horses to the army and to purchase arms and equipment from abroad.
The war against Paraguay enabled the government of Argentina to
consolidate political control over the nation's previously autonomous
provinces. Moreover, the new Argentine army would become an active
progenitor of additional national unification and would help realize the
intent of the Constitution of 1853. Buenos Aires still posed an obstacle
to nation building. The powerful and wealthy elites of the ostensible
capital of the republic refused to give up control of their substantial
foreign trade to the national government. Domingo F. Sarmiento suc-
ceeded Mitre as president in 1868, but this worldly native of San Juan
could not overcome
porteño
protectionism of its commercial powers
and customs revenues. The
porteños
easily defeated Sarmiento's attempt
to establish agricultural colonies of immigrant farmers in Buenos
Aires province. The army eventually provided political resolution after
forging itself in a second battle, this one the last chapter of the three-
century-old struggle with the native peoples of Argentina.
The “Indian Problem”
As in colonial days, relations between settlers and the indigenous
peoples in the 19th century alternated between peaceful trade and
sanguinary hostilities. When Charles Darwin passed through the prov-
ince in 1832, he noted that frontier landowners fortified their ranch
houses due to the constant danger of Indian raids. Indian depredations
increased when drought threatened the wild cattle and horses on which
the natives subsisted and also when provincial militia forces were
engaging in conflicts elsewhere. Mounted warriors armed with bolas
and lances descended on isolated ranches, killed peons, stole herds of
cattle and horses, and kidnapped women and children.
Extensive trade had developed between the Hispanic and indig-
enous peoples of the Río de la Plata over the centuries. Indian groups
